Frontal cortex emesis between novels.

Monthly Archives: April 2010

You bet your sweet arse. If you came home from work one day to find your front door had been jimmied, your darling Precious Moments “Home Is Where The Hugs Are” wreath on the ground, your newspaper trampled, to find a guy in your house going through your jewelry, your paperwork, ganking your electronics or even just drinking your last beer standing over the open fridge, you would be pissed. And dialing 911.

You would, wouldn’t you? You would not say to the guy, “Hey, you had the gumption & ingenuity to break into my house. You are a freakin’ badass, and it’s my great honour now to not only let you finish my last beer, but also to stay in my guest room, use my towels, eat my food, watch TV as long as you like, and all you have to do is some gardening. What say you, Awesome Burglary Guy of Uncanny Cunning and Perspicacity? Oh, that’s too long. I’ll just call you Lucky Larcenist for short. You rule, LL!” Then fist bump him?

Wouldja?

Fuck no, you would not.

So, gentle reader full of piss and vinegar, why do you hate Arizona for calling the cops? And that isn’t even really what they’re doing. They’re saying, “Hey, if we find somebody committing a crime, we’re going to check their citizenship status. Two birds, one stone!” See, in my ignorance I thought the United States already did that. Hence I carry my green card everywhere with me as I was advised by Homeland Security. I’m so naive & law abiding! Stupid girl.

Imagine my shock to learn that my lefty friends were gittin’ all up in arms, boycotting Arizona Tea (which is funny because it has utterly no affiliation with AZ whatsoever) because Arizona is now doing something I figured this country already had the right to do. So I looked at the law to see what was so unfair, why the President wishes to monitor it, and see if it’s true that Arizona is full of horrible racist schmucks who ought never to drink commercially brewed iced tea products ever again. So here is the law:

Arizona Immigration Law SB 1070 states:

For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person.

HUH?! This is what you are pissed off about? If an officer approaches a person lawfully, they are to check the immigration status of that person…and…um. My God! From the hullabaloo online I thought maybe the police were going into people’s homes with billyclubs & whacking anyone over the head that might be wearing leiderhosen or a turban or listening to Shakira, or, in my case, still saying things like “Oi! There’s a penguin on the telly!”

I am deeply interested to know what the problem is. Please comment below. Because any analysis I see done by anybody who has a freaking clue in hell how the Constitution works doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered by this law. People in other countries seem flabbergasted that the US doesn’t have land mines & razor wire over every square inch of the border after 9/11. Tried sneaking into North Korea lately? Why is no one coming down on North Koreans for their blatant racism?

And that’s the crazy thing about this argument. So many are crying “racism”, like they do, which is interesting because, as many before me have pointed out, “illegal” is not a race. If you are assigning a specific race to that, that’s your boat to float, sister, not mine. However, since you’ve decided “Mexico” is a race, let’s look at it. Mexico’s immigration laws take into consideration your impact on the cultural character of the nation. So if you want to immigrate to Mexico & start a leftist commune, you better start learning regional dishes & customs & don’t you dare lump all Mexican cuisine & tradition into one category (like so many do). And God forbid you be Cuban. What, you didn’t realize not all Latino peoples are the SAME? Yeah, a lot of them hate being called Latino, too. Most folks prefer you ask.

I’ve also worked quite closely with illegal immigrants (or, as we call them in medicine, undocumented). Those folks make sure their bills are paid on time, as they naively believe that if they don’t, they will be sent back from whence they came–which apparently is not true, maybe not even in Arizona. They are, in my experience, extremely pleasant & hard working, and it’s my sincere wish that they go through the process so they can stay. In medicine of course we are not allowed to disclose their status.

No, I’m not a citizen either, but I am here in the US as a permanent resident. That’s like living with you instead of marrying you, but if you pop the question I might say yes. I’d still kind of like to date England, though, even though England is sleeping with Europe (or rather, Europe is bending England over nightly). The point is, I’m staying in your house but you are getting all the benefits of a live-in girlfriend with none of the responsibility of marriage. For example, I do your laundry & contribute to the grocery bill, but you get to say who’s in charge. I’m a sub, basically.

The guy who broke into your house is just taking stuff. If you can convince him you won’t call the police, he might do some gardening or watch your kids, in which case the guy who came here legally & did all the work to get here is not getting a chance to do that for you. You are also driving the legal guy’s salary down, as you are paying the burglar a pittance. If you want more people to come, clamour for relaxation of the immigration process, not for the boycotting of an entire state who is just trying to sort of enforce laws already on the books.

But by all means, if you are so terrified of being called a racist that you don’t want to support the enforcement of America’s laws, do not call the police the next time someone breaks into your house. That would, after all, be classist. The poor guy clearly doesn’t have as much as you have, so breaking into your home is only fair. You should let him move in, & also subsidize his entire existence. Kind of like a slave, huh?

If you are not willing to do that, please rethink your histrionic response.

And if you can’t in any way see how your response might be histrionic, and instead are just irritated with me, please enjoy this, from whence the title of this blog comes. I’ll never leave you without a little sugar, baby. You are, after all, letting me pay to live in your house.

So it appears that the Library of Congress is going to gank the Twitter archive & there ain’t a thing we can do about it. As some of you have been saying to me all day on Twitter, who cares? Why are you, Right Wing Loon, annoyed by this? Why did you create the apparently non-functioning hashtag #StickTHATInYourLibraryOfCongress?

Ok kids, here’s a run down of the process I went through regarding this announcement, in order from Right Wing Loon Anger to Compassion For Future Generations. It gets funnier as you go, so turn off your outrage that I don’t think everything ever is wonderful and just try to follow the process. Comments are welcome, especially if you bring something new that I haven’t considered.

Initial Reaction 1. Why the hell do we need a government archive of stuff that is already archived by a privately run company? Why indeed? What else does the government get to archive for important historical purposes? If they need, for some reason, every tweet about Justin Beiber and the #threewordsaftersex, why not just start recording the conversation you’re having in a streetside cafe? That’s public domain. Why not indeed?

“You’re a big paranoid right wing loon!” you cry. “Go have a tea party with Sarah Palin!” Why, that would be lovely. If she invited me, you betcha I’d go. But if you don’t understand why it’s dodgy that the government wants a copy of something already available for research purposes, it would be very hard to help you understand. Also, I don’t want to ever sound like my father, who grew up under Communism but is also nuts, so I won’t go into that. On some things, the man is right. This would be one of them. My grandfather was imprisoned for the things he wrote in the newspaper during the Communist take over of Czechoslovakia, and since some of you are so quick to compare Twitter to other published works, that ought to make you slightly itchy. Deny it or not, the socialism of today comes creeping in, softly, without fanfare, and in tiny bites so you shrug it off & don’t even notice it.

(Except for healthcare. Apparently the insurance companies needed a huge boost to their stock prices RIGHT NOW. So that was just pushed through. The subtlety is starting to dip. So many of you are willing to accept the changes, the government’s getting a little more brazen every month.)

But that’s not really about the Library of Congress and Twitter, is it? So…say that it’s totally legitimate, maybe even fun, for a government entity to have copies of something already publically available by a private company. Because it’s HISTORY, right? We’re all a part of history!

Reaction 2 (after discussion w/ thoughtful friend). Some of you think it’s neat. And I get that. If you, like me, are a fan of Ken Burns’ documentaries, you love the bits with the lilting bluegrass music and Sam Waterston’s pleasant voice saying “Dearest Mary, I fear the South may win this thing, and before the capital is stormed, I hope to plunge my cock into you one last time. I fear the pleasing white mound of your buttocks might never be viewed by these misty eyes again. All my heart and soul, Abe.” You love seeing snippets of people’s lives through their private letters. I assure you if those folk had those letters archived for posterity while they were alive, they would scream bloody blue murder.

Although I am sure there are 1% of tweets out there worthy of permanency in a government archive, the vast majority of Twitter, and I say this with love, are cat photos and sandwich reports. Also what has bacon. My roommate, who is a law student & is always thinking about such things, argued that the Library of Congress is making it so we can research various vital topics better. I responded, “Research WHAT? The mystery of who can haz cheeseburger?”

The overwhelming majority of us are just not fucking important, folks. We are morons, and we tweet moronic things. I know you have better things to do than read that my cat is not getting along with another cat. I tweet it because for some reason, the 714 people who follow me occasionally find me amusing. I don’t expect it to go beyond there, because it’s NOT IN ANY WAY IMPORTANT. History doesn’t care what you think of Hurley. History doesn’t care what candy has bacon in it. History doesn’t care that #punkbitchesbetrippin. History isn’t going to give a diarrhea-soaked dump in hell what Justin Beiber did or who he was. History really could give a flying fuck about Megapirhana, manbearpig, #tcot or whether or not you were a cheater.

We are meaningless specks in terabytes of worthlessness. It’s NOT HISTORY. It’s not research. The only value at all in the Library of Congress saving our muck for posterity will be a ton of links to actual blogs & articles that any idiot could get if they searched on Google. Why Twitter? Why not Facebook? Why not MySpace? Why not bulletin boards? Why not every blog ever?

What’s next, Library of Congress? What total idiot spouting nonsense will you need to archive for posterity next? Why do you need to archive total idiots talking about nothing all day? If I don’t read 95% of the tweets in my stream, why the hell do YOU want them?

Reality television and social networking kind of blossomed at the same time. For some reason, many of us believe that people actually give a crap what we think, that we’re important, and we deserve to be famous and, dare you say it, even influential. This cultural narcisism has evolved to the point where we actually think that people in 2095 will remember that we were a Real Housewife of Van Nuys or that we once met a guy at Subway who looked kinda like the guy from Human Target. SERIOUSLY?

Trending Topics is where love for humanity goes to die. Don’t ever look there. If you do, pray before, during, & after for the strength of Jesus to forgive your fellow man for existing. Then ask yourself “Does this belong in the Library of Congress?” Give an honest answer. Yes, freedom of speech. But we say lots of stupid crap to each other daily that is not archive-worthy. Why? Because we’re not as awesome as we think we are. We’re just people, living our lives. That’s ok. It’s ok to be a normal person. None of us has to be an influence on society, and many people who already are shouldn’t be. Hello, Kardashians.

Reaction 4. Social networking. We microblog to meet other microbloggers. Will the Library of Congress start showing up to Singles Wine Tasting Night at Whole Foods and record those influential and life affirming exchanges for posterity? Will the Ken Burns of 2095 have an audio snippet that goes something like “Dude, this pinot is fruitier than the rest. So what do you do? Oh yeah? I’m in synergy. What do you do to relax? Yeah, bikram is my favourite, too.” Will the Ken Burns of 2095 have some sincere and velvet voiced actor read “Avatar was amazing. You should see it in 3D at least twice, holy crap”?

Reaction 5. People from all over the world use Twitter. What are their rights in regards to the American Library of Congress? Does anybody know? If so, please comment. My overseas friends are most eager to know.

My roommate suggested something brilliant. We should have the option PER TWEET to make a post private to your followers or public. That way, if you have something loaded with historical significance to share, you can make it public. If you’re just tweeting lines from Mighty Boosh, well, that’s up to you. I think this is a brilliant option, and it will probably make the Library of Congress happier, as well as future historians. What say you, Twitter?

Apparently the government is going to do whatever it likes, but in the meantime, do your part to spare the future our trite bullshit. Some poor 19 year old digging around for reactions to the first black president in history will bless you in his prayers at night. Don’t hate on that kid; Twitter. Give us the public/private per tweet option.

Today, I wound up on Arroyo, utterly convinced I was going home despite the fact that the 110 had ended I was now in Pasadena, signs for the Rose Bowl all around me. Depeche Mode fans are probably slick with giddy anticipation, but no. I wasn’t supposed to be in Pasadena. You see, I live in Encino. Off the 101.

You’d think I’d remember that, yes? No. In fact although I know intellectually that I live off the 101, which I can actually hear from my bedroom, I am convinced mind, body & soul that I live on the 110.

I am in fibroflare.

Some of you are groaning. My long time readers who recall my MySpace whinging of yore are so over this. The rest of you think I’ve discovered some scintillating new L.A. night spot where they bump Kei$ha next to Kajagoogoo, but no. Fibroflare is no club, & if it were, the only people who got in would be pummeled by the bouncers first, & the only drink served would be paint thinner with an Everclear chaser.

I have a condition called fibromyalgia, or FMS for short. It is a neuromuscular disorder characterized by widespread pain in all four quadrants, fatigue, cognitive discombobulation & motor dysfunction. The cog discombob is colloquially referred to as fibrofog, as your brain might as well have been vaporized into a mist, & flares of symptoms are exciting for friends & family alike. Congrats! You now live with an achy, stabby, crampy, electrical-shooty zombie voodoo doll. Yay you!

I am lucky enough to have been nearly symptom-free for several months, but not today. Today I am chronicalling this bastard for you normal folk from my iPhone in bed with an electric blanket turned up to Equator. I can’t sit up to use the lap top & only two fingers sorta work. But many of you don’t know about FMS, & seem curious, so now you’ve opened the flood gate for whinging. Go Team Aww Crap!

Here’s how it started. As many of you know, I’ve been kind of failing to sleep. This spells doom for the fibrowad (my name for how we feel when we’re like this, because it’s akin to being chewed gum). FMS is best combatted with decent sleep, as it allows our bodies to heal & our neurotransmitters to stop being drama queens. However, if you fail to sleep repeatedly, as I have, your body doesn’t repair itself & all those little microtears we all get during the day send pain signals to the fibrobrain, which then responds with all the drama & histrionics of a Southern Belle on PCP.

So yesterday I was walking to the kitchen & just kind of stopped being able to walk (it’s kind of like MS in that regard, which is what the doctor originally thought I had). I had to grip a wall for a minute & then I was ok. I thought nothing of it; I mean, I used to fall down crossing the street for God’s sake. Losing containment in my own kitchen? Not a big deal.

I then realized that I had somehow pulled a calf muscle, probably from the cramp I got Sunday night, the origin of which I decline to explain. Today, while doing a spot of acting for Tab’s mock trial at law school today (a very small, dim spot) I realized my shoulders & arms kind of were trying to kill me a little bit. The muscles feel like they’ve split up with the bones, told them to pack their things, & get the HELL out.

Then I tried to drive home. On the 110. I live on the 101. Allegedly. I still don’t quite believe it.

I also said “substicuting”.

I was not going to get home in time to eat & get to work on time, so I drove straight to work. I totally forgot the details of a client I’d spoken to 2 days earlier. That is VERY unlike me.

I’ve been preventing further flares with diet (keeping my Celiac disease in check) & movement, which is essential to fibrowads even though lots of us protest. Sleep & not eating regularly appear to be the triggers. Oh, & possibly denial.

I am currently reading Sue Ingebretsen’s ‘FibroWHYalgia’, which is awesome & is an inspiration for anyone with a chronic illness. It’s funny, which is essential, & hopeful, which is unheard of in books about FMS. Obviously I need to hurry up & get to the bit about flares…

So if I go really stupid on you (more than usual), please ask me what is 101? If I answer “Denzel Washington”, tell me I need more sleep. And stop asking me to do things.